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Summary Of The Dangers Of Digital Distractedness By Lauren Shinozuka

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Brief Essay 1 McKenna Kendrick English, Writing, & Literature, Blue Mountain Community College Wiring 122 Professor Berlie January 25, 2023 Word count with bibliography: ; word count without bibliography: The art of rhetoric is hard to master. Many spend decades developing their skills and the various techniques available to persuade an audience. Lauren Shinozuka wrote an essay entitled The Dangers of Digital Distractedness. In this essay, Shinozuka argues that millennials are too dependent on technology, with said dependency ultimately degrading their minds and interpersonal relationships. The author attempts to use the rhetorical triangle to persuade her audience, and at times succeeds. While Shinozuka cultivated an environment that …show more content…

Shinozuka does back up why she is applying her personal experiences to an entire demographic (Ramage et. al, 98). Throughout the essay, she refers to her generation as a collective by using “we” and “us” (Ramage et. al, 98). Furthermore, Shinozuka is relying on her personal experiences to support her claims by applying them to every other millennial (Ramage et. al, 98). Take the third paragraph, for example. Shinozuka shares her experience of an old acquaintance complimenting her class (Ramage et. al, 98). This makes her viscerally uncomfortable. Shinozuka’s word choice is significant in this paragraph because terms like “we” and “our” insinuated that what she experienced was universal (Ramage et. al, 98). In and of itself, this doesn’t weaken her argument. What does weaken her argument, however, is the lack of evidence or reasoning to support why she assumes her experiences to be universal (Ramage et. al, 98). Shinozuka fails to realize that her generation is not monolithic. Instead, millennials are a large group of people that come from different backgrounds, have different experiences, and lead different lives. Applying personal experiences to an entire generation without providing evidence as to why it is reasonable to do so doesn’t make sense because personal experiences are not universal (Ramage et. al, 55). Had Shinozuka offered evidence suggesting that experiences such as these were commonplace, that would be different (Ramage et. al, 55). If she did that, the addition of her personal experience would strengthen her argument instead of weakening it (Ramage et. al, 55). Moreover, pieces of information that should have citations don’t have citations (Ramage et. al, 98). In the introduction, Shinozuka states that millennials check their phones “every six and a half minutes a day.” She doesn’t provide a source for this information (Ramage et. al, 98). Withholding sources from

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